OTN Scanning History
OTN magazine scanning details – 1985 to current
Although the RAOTC (Radio Amateurs Old Timers Club of Australia) published newsletters earlier, the first issue of OTN magazine was the March 1985 edition. A Victorian only issue was published in September 1985. For the next six years only one issue of OTN was published each year. In 1992 two issues were published, and that practice continues to the present day, with a March and a September issue being published each year.
Earlier issues were published at approximately a B5 size (180 mm x 264 mm), although there were some minor variations in this size due to the printer’s trimming. The September 2001, March 2002, and the September 2002 issues of OTN were slightly larger at 188 mm x 282 mm. From the March 2003 issue of OTN to the present time, all issues have been a standard A4 size.
All issues of OTN have been printed in grayscale (black and white). No colour printing has been used, although the earlier B5 size issues used different coloured paper for the covers, and occasionally a few coloured sheets inside.
OTN on disc/flash drive
Many of the founding and early members of the RAOTC have now become Silent Keys, and it was feared that the early history of the Club was fast disappearing. Therefore, it was decided to record all issues of OTN in digital format on disc/flash drive before it was too late.
The first challenge for me was to accumulate a complete set of OTNs. Thanks to the assistance and generosity of the late Arthur Evans VK3VQ, the late Allan Doble VK3AMD, and Ron Cook VK3AFW, I managed to gather together a complete set of OTN.
As you look through the copies of OTN on the disc/flash drive, you will note that a number of the earlier issues have blemishes and several have notations on some pages made by the original owner of those issues. I have not attempted to digitally remove these marks and notes.
You will also note the considerable improvement in typesetting, layout and printing from the earlier issues to the present day issues of the magazine.
Scanning
After considerable experimentation and much deliberation, the earlier issues of OTN were scanned in grayscale at 200 DPI into an uncompressed TIF format. Those issues which had coloured paper covers, etc have not been scanned in colour in order to keep the file size down.
The scans from these earlier issues (up to and including the March 2002 issue) were then loaded into a graphics editing program page by page and enhanced. This entailed cropping the image to remove those parts of the scan which did not pertain to the page in question (the over-scan), straightening the scan (this was difficult with earlier issues because the method of laying out was apparently the time honoured manual ‘cut and paste’ system and columns of text, graphics, and headers or footers, were not quite parallel), and enhancing the contrast and sharpness of the scan.
In many cases, the resultant scans from this careful work were better than the original hard copy OTNs looked.
The enhanced page scans TIF files were then converted to PDF format and linked together to make a complete magazine.
From the September 2002 issue, the PDF files were constructed directly from the desktop publishing program (PageMaker 7.1) I used to produce those issues. Naturally, these later issue PDF files are much smaller in file size and there are no problems with contrast, sharpness and straightness.
Viewing the digital format OTNs
As mentioned above, all of the digital copies of OTN on the disc/flash drive are in PDF (Portable Document Format) which is an international standard.
If you do not have a PDF reader program on your computer, there are many free PDF reader programs available for download from the web. The most commonly used free PDF reader program is Adobe Reader which is available from a number of web sites.
However, this is a rather large download, and there are several much smaller free and equally effective PDF reader programs available such as Foxit.
When viewing these digital copies of OTN on screen, you will note that you can expand the viewing size up to at least 200% without any noticeable degradation in what you are looking at. I usually view at about 180% which comfortably fills the width of my computer screen and makes it very easy to read.
OTN index
On the disc/flash drive you will find an OTN Articles Archive Index in PDF format. The articles published in OTN are listed in magazine issue and page number order in this index. The ‘find’ function (Ctrl F Windows) or the ‘Search Function’ (Mac OS X – magnifying glass in Preview) will quickly locate what you are looking for.
I have spent over 200 hours on this project but not only have I enjoyed the task, I have also learnt a lot more about the fascinating history of amateur radio, and about the early days of the RAOTC.
I trust you enjoy having and reading this historical record of the RAOTC magazine OTN from its very first edition published in March 1985.
Bill Roper OAM VK3BR, RAOTC member No 978, September 2022.
Postscript
The last edition of OTN produced by Bill was the first colour edition [OTN 73 March 2024].
Following Bills resignation as editor of OTN new desktop publishing software was selected to avoid having to pay for the software and make the process more transparent and easier to transfer files. Scribus was selected for this purpose. This is shareware software [free] and has a user base which updates the software on a regular basis. The PDF files of the current editions are produced directly from Scribus for both the print [black and white] and the colour editions. The index file is also updated after each edition and is posted on the website under the Old Timers News heading Here: OTN Index
Note: The OTN files are still available to members on DVD or Flash Drive. This is a good way to maintain a personal archive as you can download the most recent editions from the web site and store them with the other files on the flash drive.
For details of how to obtain and pay for a either the DVD or Flash drive go to the website here:
Paying Money to RAOTC